


B I N G O

by Fourthlinewinger



Series: #worlds2017 [3]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Fluff, Humor, M/M, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 11:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11207565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fourthlinewinger/pseuds/Fourthlinewinger
Summary: Impartial observers Andre Burakovsky and Marcus Johansson referee a game of 'Nicky on a Date' Bingo for the Greater Washington Capitals Groupchat. Shenanigans ensue.





	B I N G O

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who's kudosed, commented, and bookmarked. This one's for you :)

The date was going poorly

Andre knew this because Jojo told him so, and also because he was live tweeting events to several dozen hockey players.

“Nicke has no game,” Jojo mused from his seat across from Andre.

Andre looked up from his towering dessert of whipped cream and almond paste. “Hmm? Oh, yes. Is he checking his phone again? Did anyone have ‘Nicke checks his phone at least five times?’” He took a careful bite of selmor. He still ended up with fluff on the tip of his nose. It was a very nice restaurant in downtown Stockholm, and so not really the place for a whipped cream covered nose. Mackan obligingly handed him a napkin. 

Andre cleaned the cream off his nose and waited for Jojo to finish texting the update to their team, plus most of the people who used to be on their team, plus an assortment of misfits who were just in on the groupchat because Ovi invited everyone to join.

“Greenie,” Jojo said, after giving everyone a moment to respond. “He and Ovi are cleaning up. They’re claiming to be one more away from Bingo.”

They were seated at a small table against the wall with a good view of the rest of the dining room and an excellent view of a table about two meters away. That table lacked a candle, but it did include two blonds awkwardly eating dinner together.

“Nicke will be pleased if Greenie wins,” Andre said “Oh, look, Papa just did the ‘someone please help me before I am forced to dirty my hands with murder’ smile. I think Willy will finally get one.” He sent the message to the group. It took a moment for his phone to process every person in the chat simultaneously sending back a smiley face, or thumbs up, or goal siren. Nicky’s awkward murder smile was a pretty safe bet when playing ‘Nicky on a Date Bingo.’ A lot of people playing had some version of Nicke’s weirdest smile on their card.

Andre and Jodo, of course, had no cards, as they were the impartial observers, the guardians of the law, the referees, if you will. In the spirit of the NHL, they were on former Penguins Nisky and Orpy’s side. It was a shame Nisky and Orpy weren’t actually all the at good at ‘Nicky On A Date’ Bingo.’ Andre and Jojo had managed to fuzz Nisky’s ‘overly specific order’ into Nicky’s veto of the wine pick, but Orpy only had two squares so far. You needed five in a row to call Bingo. Forty-five minutes in, Ovi and Greenie were already one square away from winning.

“If they both win, do they have to split the prize?” Andre asked, scrolling past Willy’s ‘got one losers.’ The prize was a pool of money created by the buy in for the game. There was a lot of cash on the line.

“Sudden death in overtime,” Mackan proposed. “Whoever correctly guesses about the goodnight kiss gets the pot and bragging rights.”

“Ooh, good one,” Andre grinned, and let everyone know about the rule change.

Ovi and Greenie enthusiastically agreed to the modified rules, which wasn’t great for Andre’s role as an NHL ref, but did keep him from getting overwhelmed with sad Russian smilies.

‘Wait you think Nicky’s the type to kiss on the first date?????’ Osh texted.

Andre didn’t need to come up with a reply, Carly and Alzy were more than happy to take care of that. He focused his attention back on Nicke.

From two and a half tables away, Andre and Jojo could clearly hear Nicky say the word ‘kids.’ They fist bumped as quietly as possible.

“Is it about Kuzy’s recent picspam or his annual plan to adopt ‘this summer, no, really, it will happen this year?’” Jojo demanded.

Andre wasn’t sure. Since Kuzy’s daughter had learned to say ‘Papa’ and ‘Mama,’ everyone got daily (sometimes hourly) updates on Kuzy’s attempts to teach her ‘Russia best,’ ‘I love Daddy,’ and ‘It was a good goal!’ It was pretty much the cutest thing Andre had ever seen, and he had once taken Osh’s and Alzy’s girls trick-or-treating. Andre was positive Nicke was charmed enough to bring back half a toystore for the littlest Kuznetsov when they all flew back to Washington in August. He had already dropped the other half of the toy store off at Mackan’s for baby Jojo.

However, as much as Nicke liked to talk about how cute his teammates kids were, he really liked to talk about his own potential offspring. All the Caps children were going to mourn the day Nicke had his own kid to spoil. He always went a little stir-crazy in summer and started to figure maybe he could raise a child alone while still playing hockey.

Andre shrugged. “Just say he started talking about kids.”

Jojo nodded, typed, and they waited for the response.

“No dice for Greenie, but O says he’s now one away from Bingo in three different directions,” Jodo reported. He nibbled his potatoes, which he had ordered because he was an old man who needed to be careful what he ate. Andre had gone straight to dessert. Andre could still spend the summers cheating on his diet. Andre’s life was good.

“He better hope he gets it soon, or Els is gonna catch up.” Andre took another large bite of selmor. It was so nice to be back in Sweden, where the food was properly seasoned and he wasn’t stuck missing lingonberries. Though he did miss American proportions. Hockey players needed a lot of food, and Americans considered an 32 ounce steak reasonable. It was a perfect match.

“Poor Carly. He’s complaining bias with the kids one.” Andre frowned at his phone. “Can you hear any better? It would be nice to know the specifics of the kid conversation.”

“I was talking about adopting,” Nicke said dryly.

Jojo and Andre’s heads snapped up from their phones to see Nicke standing over them. They both lit up with the force of their smiles.

“Hey, Backis,” Jojo greeted, pushed a chair out with his foot to offer it to Nicke.

“Hi Nicke!” Andre beamed and leaned over to hug Nicke.

Nicke hugged him back for a moment before taking the seat. “Hello, boys.”

“You aren’t done, are you?” Jodo asked. “Because I don’t think anyone had a square for, ‘was impolite and cut out early to go sit with Burt and Jojo.’”

“If Ovi won on that, he would never let you live it down,” Andre pointed out.

“Ovi is not going to win with that one. Willy is in the restroom,” Nicke informed them. “But thank you for your confidence.”

“It’s not like you look like you’re having fun!” Andre said.

“Actually, you look kind of spacey,” Mackan said. “Are your allergies acting up?”

Now that Andre was looking, Nicke’s eyes were suspiciously red and swollen and he was carrying around his emergency tissues in his hands, not in his pockets.

“I got flowers as a gift,” Nicke said. “There were daisies in the bouquet.”

Jojo looked at Andre. Andre looked at Jojo.

“Here,” Jodo said, pulling out a box of Sudafed from his jacket pocket while Andre let everyone know there had been flowers and the Sudafed had been necessary. “Ovi asked us to bring this just in case.”

Nicke opened the box and popped enough pills that he would definitely fail a drug test. Andre winced and let Ovi know it was a very bad allergy attack. Ovi sent back a series of sad Russian faces and instructions to ‘order Becky morewine!!!!(((((.‘ Nicke chased his pills with both Mackan and Andre’s glasses of water, then looked around for more. 

Andre signaled the server. The server looked slightly confused at Nicke’s game of musical chairs, but came back quickly with the wine and refilled the water glasses.

“I also got a box of peeps, so someone was definitely telling tales,” Nicky said, settling more comfortably in his seat, wine glass in hand.

“There’s video,” Andre said. “It’s great.”

“You could actually check your messages,” Mackan teased. “Then you might be better informed.”

Nicke flipped them both off, but did look at his phone. He said, “I think you’re checking your messages often enough for all of us. Is Greenie in on this? Why do I have a message saying ‘please go on a romantic walk by the water.’” He flicked the pop up away with his fingertip. “Tell the boys that cheating is not allowed.” 

“It’s not cheating if we didn’t see it,” Jodo and Andre chorused. They high fived over the table.

“You are officially the worst children,” Nicke informed them.

“If Ovi wins, we’re going to review his board for language issues,” Mackan said peacefully. “Ideally it will last at least 10 minutes, Greenie, Orpy, and Winny will all call bullshit while we debate, and in the end it will come down to whether or not emojis are allowed.” He looked at Andre. “Are emojis allowed?”

“Let’s see how many Ovi has on his card before we decide,” Andre said.

“I’m adopting Snarls and Schmidty,” Nicke said. “Ovi can have the rest of you.”

“Papa!” Andre protested.

Nicke ruffled Andre’s hair. “Order an entree, Burt, or you’ll wake up starving in the middle of the night.” He stood and headed back to his own table about fifteen seconds before Nylander reappeared. He took the wine with him.

Andre pouted down at his plate.

Mackan laughed at him. “Did anyone have, ‘Nicky yells at Burky for his diet?’ on their board?”

Andre stuck out his tongue but did signal the waiter (again) to put in an order for meatballs. 

Mackan went for the cheesecake.

“No, you can’t have any,” Jojo said, when the waiter was gone and Andre’s pleading eyes had turned to him.

“But Mackan-” Andre begged.

“Order your own food!” Jojo said.

Andre pouted harder.

“Nicke just made a joke that fell really, really flat.” Jojo neatly diverted the conversation.

“Wait, really?” Andre glanced over at Nicke’s table. Yes, that was Nicke’s ‘embarrassed’ blush, barely visible over his ‘I’m about to spend fifteen minutes straight sneezing’ flush. The allergy attack did explain why Nicke had moved the little candle off his table, though. Even unscented candle smoke could set him off if he was already sensitized. “How do you know it was a joke?”

“He did that smiley eyes things like he was pleased with himself and waiting for a laugh,” Mackan said. “He...didn’t get a laugh.”

“I’d have laughed,” Andre said.

“Me, too,” Mackan said.

They exchanged looks. Andre sent out the text. They got a chorus of, ‘I would have laughed,’ and ‘but Nicky tells the best jokes!’ It wasn’t actually true; Nicky’s sense of humor was warped, to say the least, but Andre would go to his grave claiming otherwise. Nylander totally should have laughed.

Orpy texted, ‘I have that Nicky didn’t laugh at a bad joke. Does it count?’

“Obviously, you are a gem, the world should be kinder to you, please mark that one down,’ Jojo texted back.

Nicke texted, ‘You are all terrible people. It does not count.’

Holts texted, ‘NICKY TRIED TO REF HIS OWN DATING GAME BIIIIINNNNNGGGGOOOOO!’

“Wait what?” Andre blinked. “I didn’t think Holts was even close.”

The next few dozen lines was the rest of the group arguing that Nicke’s getting involved invalidated the square and it totally didn’t count.

“I didn’t think Holtsy was even playing.” Jojo frowned. He sent, ‘Holts please send us a pic of your card.’

‘No problem,’ Holts sent, along with a picture of a Skittles covered Bingo board.

Across the top of the board, he had: 

  1. Checks phone every 5 minutes
  2. Awkward murder smile
  3. Refs his own damn game
  4. Receives flowers
  5. Allergy attack from flowers



“I don’t know,” Jodo said. “Is the allergy attack and the flowers actually two different things?”

“And I don’t think he checked it every five minutes,” Andre concurred.

“Hmmmm,” they chorused.

‘We have to review,’ Jojo texted. ’There’s a possibility of duplicate entries, and we have to confirm that that Nicke really did check his phone that often.’

‘What sort of BS is that?’ Holts typed.

‘Is this your idea of offsides?’ Winny demanded.

‘His foot was in the crease! NO GOAL!’ Orpy wrote.

‘THE PUCK WAS FUCKING LOOSE!’ Chorns added.

Andre grinned at Jojo. “I love this game,” he said.

Two and a half tables away, with two glasses of wine and an unlocked cell phone in front of him, Nicky Backstrom laughed so hard he cried. It might have been the allergies.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @ [fourthlinewinger](fourthlinewinger.tumblr.com)


End file.
